​SAVANNAH'S HOPE IS IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING .......savannahshope.org

In Memory of you Savannah.....

We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in Iowa dedicated to serving families with children who have serious illnesses and conditions requiring hospitalization.

Savannah's Hope provides financial assistance in the form of grants to families who need help with medical travel expenses . We also provide encouragement, emotional support and education.

Our website has resource lists for families, information about how we help and easy ways to get involved with helping families. Have a question? We'd love to hear from you! Contact us through Facebook, email or by phone today.

Savannah's Story by Willie Bagby (Her Mother)

Nine years ago this summer our 17-year-old daughter, Savannah, woke up having seizures. She had never had them before in her life! In fact, she had a pretty normal childhood with few medical issues. We took her to our local children's hospital and they put her on epilepsy medication and sent her home after one night's stay and observation. On May 6,2007 she woke up having UNSTOPPABLE seizures. We allowed them to put her in a medically-induced coma to prevent severe damage from happening to her brain. Never in a million years did we not expect them to take her off the medication and have our Savannah back after they figured out the cause . Exactly three months later, we lost our daughter to liver failure caused by the toxicity of prescription medicines!

Why do I share this? Because our daughter was a mystery patient to her doctors. They didn't have any idea what caused her seizures. We didn't know until her autopsy that she had a rare disease called Alpers Syndrome. Rolland and I, her parents, had passed on recessive genes that caused her to have this disease. With every breath we breathe until our last, we will do everything we can to raise awareness about rare childhood diseases. We started a nonprofit charity called Savannah's Hope. Our nonprofit helps families with traveling expenses to out-of-state doctors and hospitals.

Why do we do this? First, to give our daughter a legacy that lives on by helping others. It's what she would want! Second, because a very good group of people from our church made it possible for me (her mother) to live at the hospital with Savannah for three months and for Rolland, her father, and Savannahs brothers Spencer and Micah to be able to travel to St. Paul every weekend and also to be able to take off the last 2 weeks of Savannah's life and stay with her.Please take a look at the rest of this website. We share family stories of other children with rare disease. We have a download page where you can download for an application for assistance. We share links to other websites telling about rare diseases. We have many other pages, please take the time to look them over. If you have questions or ideas, please share them with us. We'd love to hear from you!